Last year Brenda and I visited Stanford Uni in the San Francisco area. Until then, I had no idea that Stanford “hid” the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn there for a while. Many in the West feared that Russian agents might execute him, and Putin’s antics in modern times highlight the risk Russian emigres still run.

In his early days in the West, Solzhenitsyn felt so threatened that he wanted to obtain a gun permit, according to FBI memos and police reports. He was denied because he was not a U.S. citizen, and the FBI noted it would not intervene in his request.